May 2012
2 posts
a guide to today's ny times
Read this, not that.
-Mallory
Pictures I Would Like To Not See On Facebook Anymore: 1. Engagement pictures that involve a happy couple doing things they don’t actually do in real life, like rolling in the grass or making out on a bridge. 1b. Especially if one of the two fiancees is my ex. 2. Your dinner. 3. Babies of people I went to school with. 4. Class pictures from elementary school when some idiot tags...
April 2012
4 posts
As a young man, Peter Thiel competed to get into Stanford. Then he competed to get into Stanford Law School. Then he competed to become a clerk for a federal judge. Thiel won all those competitions. But then he competed to get a Supreme Court clerkship. Thiel lost that one. So instead of being a clerk, he went out and founded PayPal. Then he became an early investor in Facebook and many other...
good morning!
email from mom: By the way, you handled that [uncomfortable situation relating to your work] very well last night.
response from me: I know you think I am a mess of a human being, but I am actually very good at what I do and my unnatural sense of self confidence isn’t wholly derived from being spoiled by you for 26 years.
I’m not sensitive about my impending graduation/doom. Not at...
Ugh, don’t make me do it.
I don’t want to talk about “Girls.”
I don’t want to talk about Lena Dunham. I don’t want to talk about the fact that “Tiny Furniture” actually made me angry in an active way, in a way that made me want to graffiti “LENA DUNHAM SUX” on a Greenpoint warehouse using sustainable spray paint, purchased at a...
With the five year anniversary of my graduation from college approaching almost as fast as my thesis deadline, I’ve had lots of time for self-reflection, as I stand over my sink, eating cereal by the handful (or matzoh this week! jew stuff whee!) and I thought I might share some of it with you. Especially since we have basically shared nothing with you lately (grad school is hard, man!).
...
March 2012
11 posts
So we’ve been away a while.
I’m sorry.
Sometimes life takes turns and even if you happen to be co-writing an exceptionally navel-gaze-y blog, they aren’t turns that you necessarily feel like sharing. They may be too boring, they may be too painful, you may be too busy. In my case, it’s been all three. But I’m sorry I’ve neglected you - and I know you’re...
If resisting peer pressure is hard for you, go at it a different way. Only accept jobs at places where you hate all of your coworkers. Alternatively, get them all to hate you. Working somewhere that won’t let you leave for lunch is also a good option, or a place with such elaborate security theater or terrible parking that leaving the office is even more painful than bringing your own food...
“I recently turned thirty, the age by which, according to William James, “the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again.” But he wrote that in 1890, before mobile devices and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors and Lana Del Rey and the fragmentation of the self, and I’m happy to report that my character is as soft as unhandled Play-Doh. For the past year I’ve slept...
proof that it's never too late to change
“I am sincere in what I am saying now, and I was absolutely sincere then,” Ms. Sobchak said this month, when a Ukrainian television talk show host, Oleksandr Tkachenko, asked if she was the same person. “Yes, I also was that vulgar fool with pink bows in bright white hair emitting the most unbelievable rubbish. This is also a part of my life, the merry and carefree one. “And in fact I lived a...
“Sometimes you have to play for a long time to be able to play like yourself.” - Miles Davis
-Mallory
Addendum to Mallory's Last Post
“Notice how popular the word “random” has become among young people. A Disney TV show called “So Random!” has ranked first in the ratings among tweens. The word has morphed from a precise statistical term to an all-purpose phrase that stresses the illogic and coincidence of life. Unfortunately, societies that emphasize luck over logic are not likely to thrive.”
-Oh my GOD New York...
(Read this if you want to be annoyed. But personally, I thought this was way more interesting.)
-Mallory
There’s this great play right now at Playwrights Horizons in New York called “Assistance” about Hollywood assistants. I took my parents last night - I’d already seen it twice before, but I wanted to take them to it because, as I told them as we were settling into our seats, “this play explains why I’m broken.”
It’s hard not to appreciate a play...
a little tina fey for your wednesday
“Amy Poehler was new to SNL and we were all crowded into the seventeenth-floor writers’ room, waiting for the Wednesday read-through to start. There were always a lot of noisy ‘comedy bits’ going on in that room. Amy was in the middle of some such nonsense with Seth Meyers across the table, and she did something vulgar as a joke. I can’t remember what it was exactly,...
“Why today’s chick-ish flicks (yes, including Bridesmaids) still promote the stale notion that impending weddings turn otherwise self-actualized young women into crazy ladies out to be the subject of some smart young person’s graduate thesis.” - Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly
As a smart young person working on a graduate thesis that has more to do with...
“She had not been invited, of course, because she hardly even remembered Mary Agnes, but she remembered her well enough to know that Mary Agnes was one of a vast group of girls she herself viewed with complete incomprehension. ‘The Happy Ones,’ Gregg called them, not knowing exactly why they were happy and not wanting to join them, but sometimes going so far as to say that it...
February 2012
15 posts
So apparently I have to stop reading The New York Times.
-Mallory
This is an email my aunt sent to my sister and a young gentleman she is setting my sister up with.
This is not a joke. Although my sister and I wish it was.
OK…I’m emailing both of you.. I hope you will find time to meet each other. I was with [boy]’s mom this week at [our extended family’s vacation home in FL] and I mentioned fixing up my perfect niece. And...
What would you consider your “break” in terms of acting work? In 1990, December, I auditioned for [the musical] City of Angels. And I remember 6 months before that I’d said if I can’t get a job I’m going to leave and move to Seattle. You know, I just decided that I’d given it 10 years and that was enough.
Why Seattle? Well, I loved [New York] City – I had never ever decided to leave before...
Hey friends! HNTDYT is expanding off-line and into the real world. We’re putting together a live show and we would love for your experiences to be a part of it. Send us your stories, your anecdotes, anything you have to share about how not to do your twenties. Don’t worry about it being polished, we’re looking for anything and everything. You can find us at hntdyt@gmail.com -...
My friend recently shared this letter she sent to Amtrak with me and I wanted to share it with you. Enjoy.
-Mallory
Dear Amtrak,
I’m a resident of [Major East Coast City], and I had been seeing a man in New York City. We had primarily been using the bus to travel back and forth, as we both work in [a low-paying not-for-profit field] and this was more cost-effective. Unfortunately, this...
Joel: I don’t see anything I don’t like about you. Clementine: But you will! But you will. And I’ll get bored with you and feel trapped, because that’s what happens with me. Joel: Okay. Clementine: Okay. Joel: Okay.
-Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
-Mallory
another thing you need in your twenties
A best friend who will stay facebook friends with your exes after you defriend them in anger. This is important so that she can let you know when he gets engaged and send you pictures of his ugly fiancee.
Happy Valentine’s Day, ps.
-Mallory
I work out every morning. One of my best friends has a serious they-are-basically-married-already boyfriend and she always says that once I am in a similar situation, I will stop working out entirely. To this, I defiantly cry “bullshit” each and every time and not just because woe to the dude who wants to spend time with me if I’m without the mood enhancing effects of my yoga...
your twenties in song
Wouldn’t it be nice if we were older Then we wouldn’t have to wait so long And wouldn’t it be nice to live together In the kind of world where we belong
You know it’s gonna make it that much better When we can say goodnight and stay together
Wouldn’t it be nice….
-“Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” The Beach Boys
-Mallory
Dating websites have a pretty limited pool of data to draw on, and it turns out that you can’t really work out a relationship’s long-term potential based on hair color, shared love of Chinese food, complementary tastes in mid-70s folk music or even a mutual love of Star Trek. Instead, the researchers point out that the most important insights in predicting long-term romantic...
on behalf of all twentysomethings in theater
Dear Mom & Dad,
I am glad you enjoyed “Smash” last night on NBC/stayed up past 10pm for the first time in three years.
However, the only way in which this show resembles my life is that I often wear mens’ shirts. And not in a sexy, happy-birthday-mister-president sort of way, but in a seen-annie-hall-too-many-times sort of way.
But thanks for taking an active interest...
we are still accepting whatever stories you may want to share: hntdyt@gmail.com
(three posts in one day and two involve gchat! can you tell I’m working an office job today?)
-Mallory
gchat wisdom
-Mallory
“Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you don’t know what work these conditions are doing inside you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where all this is coming from and where it is going? Since you know, after all, that you are in the midst of transitions and you wished for nothing so much as to...
As students in fancy MFA programs, The Great MFA Debate is one Jessi and I have regularly. Except it usually goes like this:
One of Us: My degree is stupid. I should go to law school. The Other One: You’d hate law school. The First One: Yeah, you’re right.
The roles we play are interchangeable, but the dialogue stays the same. So it may be worth reading somebody else’s take...
January 2012
15 posts
I’m sorry, I’ve been super busy lately, so I don’t have the time right now to write a full essay about how incredibly ridiculous this is. Just know if I were to write something, it would definitely involve the words, “absurd,” “embarrassing,” and something about how there is officially no more styles in the Sunday Styles section.
But seriously, guys,...
Friends
Romans! Countrymen! Twenty-Somethings who haven’t given up hope! We need your help!
Send us your stories about your own failed experiments at dating, sex, employment and life. We’ll publish them here under your name, and they might also be included in a book! (More on that later). We need your questions, your anecdotes, your advice, and general reflections on all the things you tend...
Today, my high school/college boyfriend got engaged, but it’s okay because also today, a hobo told me I have nice legs.
-Mallory
I think this is a How To that pretty much everybody needs at some point.
-Mallory
Things I Used to Think Mattered That I’m Pretty Sure Don’t Matter Anymore:
1. My SAT scores. 2. My AP scores. 3. What my senior quote was going to be, as it would define me FOREVER. 4. If Boyz II Men would ever get back together.
-Mallory
Look, I’ll be honest, I’ve been cranky with Thought Catalog since their New Year’s Resolutions for a twentysomething ended up in my facebook newsfeed more than ours did (screw you, supposed facebook friends of mine!), but it seemed like I sort of had to share their take on What Twentysomethings Want. Some I agree with, some I don’t, but it’s still worth a read while...
Because now, thanks to technology and everybody being huge pussies about everything, it doesn’t matter if you have skills or training or years of experience. You can do it. You can do anything!
-Mallory
Goethe on Being in Your Twenties
“We are so made that we compare everything with ourselves and ourselves with everything. Therefore, our fortune or misfortune depends on the objects and persons to which we compare ourselves; and for that reason nothing is more dangerous than solitude. Our imagination, by its nature inclined to exalt itself, and nourished by the fantastic imagery of poetry, creates a series of beings of which we...
This is possibly the best news ever since Jessica got her period.
-Mallory
“I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in life. And I am horribly limited.” - Sylvia Plath
-Mallory
This ad almost made me vomit my morning oatmeal.
-Mallory
Occasionally I am prone to momentary bouts of intelligence/fabulous advice.
But also:
-Mallory
“He lived in a social landscape with astonishingly few guardrails. Some days he felt as though he was waiting for a set of opinions, habits, and goals to harden in his mind. The social critic Michael Barone argues that the United States produces moderately impressive twenty-year-olds but very impressive thirty-year-olds. He says that the hard pressures and choices that hit people during...
Here’s a fun tip for the new year:
If you had a horrible breakup with somebody three years ago and haven’t spoken to them since and you now live in different countries, don’t gchat her to see if she’d be into watching you jerk off because you can’t sleep and you thought that might help.
She’s not. And it won’t.
-Mallory
twentysomething new year's resolutions for a...
1. Get a job. 2. Be brave. 3. Care less about looking stupid. 4. Stop trying to see if a diet of frozen yogurt and coffee can sustain human life. It can’t. 5. Spend a little less time with Netflix Instant and a little more time with actual people. 6. Stop playing Words with Friends so much!!! 7. Finish things I start. 8. Travel more. 9. Be generous. 10. Try not to fight so hard against...
December 2011
22 posts
“I’ve been struggling with using the word ‘carousel’ because I keep thinking ‘merry’ is the right word: merry-go-round. and I don’t want to sound too silly or pretentious about this, but, you know, I love being in Paris. I love working at Louis Vuitton. I love fashion. That’s why I do it. Nobody’s forcing me to do this. And nobody forces...
“What truth? You see where truth is and where untruth is, but I seem to have lost my sight and see nothing. You boldly settle all important questions, but tell me, dear, isn’t it because you’re young? Because you haven’t had time to suffer until you settled a single one of your questions? You boldly look forward… Isn’t it because you cannot foresee or expect...
It seems that every time I glance at a newstand this time of year, another magazine cover is trying to tell me how to live my life. This is true most of the year (see: Jessi’s awesome piece from The Hairpin), but, in January, the month of making and breaking resolutions, is gets even worse. It seems every airbrushed lady in Hollywood wants to help me make over my life, my face, my hair, my...